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The Mexican Pentagon 177
Ehrenberg asked, had the Biennale invited a resident of Uruguay, a country
governed by a military dictatorship, to oversee the Latin American selection?
Was Kalenberg a puppet of Uruguay’s right-wing regime? Did he have
the moral authority and political vision to make a representative selection of
Latin American artists? Which Chilean artists would he select, Ehrenberg
asked, “those who are acceptable to the military junta, those who live in
exile, or both?” Ehrenberg closed his letter by accusing Kalenberg of being
an agent of “the murderous government of Uruguay” and one who, to make
matters worse, wrote in “a pompously ornate and pretentious language.” 21
Ehrenberg’s letter made it back to Kalenberg, who responded with
a polite—if ornate and slightly affected—missive reassuring the groups of his
honest intentions, of his commitment to art, and of his unwavering support
of their politically charged work (though he never revealed his stance toward
Uruguay’s military government). 22
Assuming the Mexicans had been appeased, Kalenberg went back
to work on the catalog for the Latin American selection, for which he had
grand ambitions. In a letter to Escobedo, he laid out his master plan: he
would invite three distinguished intellectuals to write about the young artists
included in the Biennale: Jorge Luis Borges from Argentina, Octavio Paz from
Mexico, and Severo Sarduy from Cuba. It is easy to see what led Kalenberg
to these three names: Borges was the most widely translated Latin American
writer; Paz had written about Breton and Duchamp and was well respected
in France; and Sarduy, a poet, novelist, and painter much admired by Roland
Barthes, lived in Paris and was the only Latin-American member of the Tel
Quel group. 23
Kalenberg’s plan was brilliant, though quite unrealistic. Who can
imagine Borges—arcane bibliophile, explorer of logical fallacies, and lover
of obscure philosophical systems—agreeing to write a text on Proceso Pentágono’s
staged kidnappings in Mexico City? Or Paz—Mexico’s most reWned
modernist—analyzing a rat-infested maquette? Even Sarduy, who was much
younger than Paz or Borges, had an artistic sensibility—he loved abstract art
and action painting and named one of his novels after the CoBrA group—
that would have been at odds with the Mexican projects.
When Proceso Pentágono heard about Kalenberg’s plan for the
catalog, their suspicions intensiWed. The group members immediately recognized
a thread linking the three famous writers to Kalenberg’s politics: at
a time when Latin American intellectuals were deeply and bitterly divided
over Cuba, Borges, Paz, and Sarduy were not among Castro’s supporters.
Borges, who was frail and old, never cared much about Cuban politics and
failed to be seduced by Castro’s charismatic personality; Paz, who like many
Latin American intellectuals had initially supported the Cuban revolution,